


If you'll be my bodyguard, I can be your long lost pal

by saltstreets



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-20 02:04:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8232263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltstreets/pseuds/saltstreets
Summary: “One day he might get bored of sitting here next to you and me,” Gary is saying and Jamie almost wants to break in with something that might be a bit too much for pre-watershed hours: he doesn’t think he could ever get bored of sitting next to Gary Neville.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_queenmaker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_queenmaker/gifts).



> Hope you enjoy this, dear recip! :D
> 
> And to our lovely mods: thank you for running ANOTHER great exchange. I would be lost without you! All my love to you both. xoxo
> 
>  
> 
> The title is from Paul Simon's _You Can Call Me Al _.__

 

 

Jamie knows before anyone else does, because Sky _does_ tell him _some_ things, like when he’s going to need to attend a match and what time they’re going to record and whether or not he’s getting his co-presenter back.

It’s a close thing, though, because what Sky likes more than keeping their employees informed is making big headlines, so roughly forty-five minutes after Jamie receives an e-mail updating him on the confirmed return of one erstwhile Gary Neville to his programme, the news drops and the internet machine starts grinding out speculation and rumour faster than he can read. There are a lot of jokes and the general sentiment is that Gary’s tail will be firmly between his legs, and while Jamie certainly can get behind the humour of the situation, he doesn’t hold with the idea that it’s entirely disgraceful. Or at all disgraceful. He’s written a _column_ on Gary's overseas venture, an actual column, so that matter ought to be done and dusted as far as he’s concerned. So he closes his laptop and chucks away his phone before he can make any unadvised and overly-indignant tweets in Gary’s defence, which if anything would only exacerbate the situation, and reads a few chapters of his book instead of watching the telly before bed.

 

 

They don’t have time to sit down properly for a catch-up before the first preview show of the season and so they go into it only having had an hour or so of face to face interaction. Not that Jamie has any concerns before the first episode; he mostly just wants to spend time with Gary, to have a sit down and catch up with each other. It’s a shame because he would have liked to do the thing properly, but the script for the first episode had been hashed out over Google Docs and a few phone calls.

At one point Gary had mentioned it over the telephone: “Are you worried we’re not prepared enough?”

Jamie had laughed. “How long have we been doing this show? I think we can manage one episode without having had a sit down and a pint.”

It isn’t as though he hasn’t spoken to Gary in all the time since they’d parted ways. They’ve amassed an almost embarrassing number of WhatsApp messages between the two of them, although admittedly quite a large percentage of them are just streams of unbroken, irritated commentary on matches that their respective clubs had been floundering over at the time. Jamie already knows Gary’s views on the transfer window and the managerial changes and even the fixture schedule.

That said, even though Jamie knows almost word for word what Gary is going to say in the preview when they discuss Conte coming in at Chelsea, he still likes hearing it out loud. Gary digs into his answer with enthusiasm, and he’s about halfway through the brick wall of words that he’s building when he glances up at Jamie and stutters into a laugh. Jamie realises that he’s got a grin on his face the size of the Nile Delta and struggles to get it under control but can’t quite.

“He’s just happy to have you back,” David jokes, and Jamie can’t even feign disagreement, he just keeps grinning as Gary continues. David’s far more right than he knows, Jamie thinks. He’s missed how long and involved Gary could get over the smallest answer, and the stupid little furrow in his forehead when he was concentrating. The concept of having missed Gary Neville is decidedly non-horrific, and Jamie doesn’t bother poking at it because he’d already examined this new development in their relationship ages ago and was mostly at peace with it.

 

 

“I am, y’know,” he says later, with slightly too much intensity as they’re scrubbing off the waxy make-up that they have to wear to look half-way decent under the cameras.

Gary looks up from his designated tiny dressing room sink with a questioning arch of his eyebrows.

“I am happy to have you back,” Jamie clarifies.

Gary’s ears go red in surprise, and Jamie can read him well enough to know he’s pleased. “Oh,” Gary says, “Thanks. Me too. I mean, I’m happy to be back as well. With you. And everything. Well, not _back_ with David because he’s new on the show, so him I’m happy to meet proper, and so, but. Yes.”

He’s rambling, slightly flustered, and Jamie grins. It reminds him of ages and ages ago when he’d first learned the delights of flattering Gary and catching him off-guard. A compliment could be met with anything from outright hostility to embarrassed confusion, and while these days they’re at a point now where Gary knows that if Jamie gives him a genuine compliment he does mean it, Jamie still does so like seeing Gary’s ears turn red like that.

 

 

Of course, a full episode is far more difficult than a three minute preview, but it’s just so easy to talk to Gary. He’d realised it some time ago now, but his friendship with Gary is one of his more valuable ones, and he’s inordinately pleased to have it back in full operation again. He’s got plenty of friends who like football, plenty of friends who play or played football, but not everyone takes such almost perverse delight in grinding a play or a tactic right down to its basis, picking it apart and pouring over every detail. Jamie had even been slightly surprised in himself that he’d found the analysis so interesting when he’d first joined the Sky team. It might be thanks to something in Gary, that: he was so earnest and so involved in the work that it was immensely difficult not to get engrossed along with him.

He was also bloody good at his job. And if there was one thing that Jamie certainly appreciated, it was someone who was competent. There were a few flies in _that_ particular ointment these days, but it was still only going to be tossers on the internet with nothing better to do who could accuse Gary’s coaching tenure as having any effect on his ability to pick out the precise reasons why Sunderland were a downward spiralling Möbius strip.

So no, Jamie hadn’t really had any concerns about how the first episode of MNF would go. After all, even at the very beginning when he and Gary had just started working together and there was still a decent amount of real hostility between them they had always managed to be professional, and their partnership had produced results. Jamie figures that if he could put on a good show with a Gary Neville whom he’d slightly hated, he can definitely put on a good show with a Gary Neville whom he quite likes and just hasn’t worked with for a bit.

The second the lights go up and the theme starts playing, he knows he’d been absolutely right. The cameras are on David and Jamie takes the opportunity to turn and smile at Gary, a full beaming smile and for a second Gary smiles back before they have to turn and be professionally unruffled.

He can’t help but feel that all is once again right in the world: Gary is standing right next to him, pen in hand, and they have a whole season of weekend evenings spent out of each others’ pockets in the Sky studios and their standard assortment of pubs.

The show bounces along as usual, with minimal snark on either side, but when they do get to the final segment for Twitter questions Jamie allows himself a nice long smirk. He’s hamming it up for the cameras but he really is going to enjoy this. Just because he and Gary are friends now doesn’t mean he doesn’t still enjoy watching Gary squirm.

 

 

The questions are as expected: a few jibes, a few nudges, and although Gary is under the proverbial cosh he’s not wincing and Jamie’s perhaps just a wee bit proud of that.

Gary is saying something about not being good enough and suddenly Jamie has to ask. He has to know, not just because it’s a basic point of inquiry but because Gary is his friend, and Jamie wants to know.

“Do you regret going?” The second he says it he has a suspicion that his expression is a little bit too intent, but whatever, it’s an important question.

“No.” The answer is prompt. Gary doesn’t have to consider for a second. It settles neatly in Jamie’s stomach. He’s torn between that same pride in Gary’s resilience and far more selfishly-edged envy, or something too close to envy for comfort.

The near-envy feels worse when not five minutes later Gary reiterates –and on live television, mind, with the nation watching and all their respective allegiances and rivalries hovering somewhere outside the studio where they had found something of a consensus that Jamie so valued- what he’d told Jamie a few times before.

“I keep telling him that he should go and do his badges,” Gary says, and Jamie can’t help a warm swell in his chest, even as he feels thrown somewhat by the praise. He isn’t entirely sure what to do with Gary’s earnest expression and far-too complimentary words. “One day he might get bored of sitting here next to you and me,” Gary is saying and Jamie almost wants to break in with something that might be a bit too much for pre-watershed hours: he doesn’t think he could ever get bored of sitting next to Gary Neville.

“It’ll come to a point,” Gary says, “when he feels he _needs_ to get out of this chair,” and Jamie’s heart lurches a little bit uncomfortably. He knows what Gary is talking about, because it’s just what Gary had complained of with increasing frequency before the chance had been given him to go to Spain. He remembers Gary’s frustration at times, and how he’d been unable to completely explain it to Jamie. There was probably some fancy German word for it but all Jamie had understood was that Gary was getting cabin fever. The only thing was, he hadn’t expected it to be offered an outlet so soon. He hadn’t liked the idea of Gary feeling rusted in at Sky. He hadn’t liked the idea of Gary feeling stagnant. But he also hadn’t liked the idea of Gary leaving.

They are approaching a dangerous territory that Jamie doesn’t feel entirely prepared to tackle. He makes some irreverent comment and lets the discussion turn to lighter fare. Gary’s words sit warm and confusing on his shoulders, and Jamie isn’t entirely certain yet how he’s going to wear them. He’s friends with Gary. That he’s used to. But _this_ belongs to a wholly new side to things that he hasn’t come to terms with yet, mostly because he’d pushed it firmly to the back of his mind while Gary had been in Valencia. A side comprising mainly of an episode in which Jamie had nearly, but not quite, slept with Gary Neville.

 

 

(There isn’t much to say about the incident in question. As the Carragher-assigned name suggested, it went more or less along these lines: they had both been drunk, Gary had been leaving for Spain in twenty-four hours, there had been a few entirely unremarkable fumbling kisses, and Jamie had nearly, but not quite, slept with him. In the end, they’d both been just on the side of too drunk, and had wound up asleep on Jamie’s sofa without anything actually happening.

Not much to it, really. Forgettable, even.

But he keeps thinking about it.)

 

 

The season kicks off with a fervour that Jamie relishes. Liverpool is flying high and although still somewhat maddeningly inconsistent, they’ve been glorious to watch. And on the other side, he’s very much enjoying having Gary around. They grab lunch on days when they have no work-related reason to, and attend the odd function together. Gary seems to be entering an embarrassingly middle-aged phase with his use of technology, and Jamie finds himself on the receiving end of more tagged Instagram photos and Tweets than ever before, mostly oddly-angled shots of Gary doing a medley of things that amuse him. It’s endearing, really, and Jamie feels more than a little bit pleased that Gary is enjoying being back as much as Jamie is enjoying having him. Now that he’s been gone and returned there doesn’t seem to be as much a reason to keep up the facade of not-getting-along that, for the last season or so at least, they’d mostly played up for the television.

(There also doesn’t seem to be as much a reason not to think about the way Gary had laughed into the crook of his neck when Jamie had put his hands up Gary’s shirt. There doesn’t seem to be as much a reason not to think about the way Gary had tugged Jamie closer, fingers curled into the pockets of Jamie’s jeans. He’d never seen Gary’s eyes look like that before: so bright and delighted.)

Of course, it’s always going to be fun to rib Gary, but before there had been the distinct sense that they should be at odds.

And Jamie knows that he’d always been a dick to Gary, because that was how they were. Angry and scrappy in the fuzzy, over-saturated colours of the television during those heady years of their youth when everything had seemed so tangible as to almost be painful: the silverware they’d won, the ankles they’d sprained, the tackles they’d flown into too hard. If he hadn’t been a dick to Gary then something fundamental would have been spun out of place in the universe. But these days he’s got a terrible itch to be nice to Gary. Jamie wants to welcome him back and take him out to dinner and ask him about Spain and ask him if he’s happy to be back on MNF, because Jamie is happy that Gary is back and he wants a sort of assurance that he hasn’t become second-best to a few difficult months. Troubled waters being the _manager of a football club_ surely could compete with smooth sailing as a television pundit, and it concerns Jamie, ever so slightly, that Gary might get itchy feet again and perhaps go somewhere that wouldn’t spit him out again so quickly.

 

 

And yes, alright, he fixates a fair bit on whether or not nearly but not quite sleeping with Gary was going to ever have a sequel, namely nearly and then actually sleeping with Gary. Gary hasn’t brought it up. Jamie doesn’t know how to.

 

 

To tell the truth, he begins to worry. He worries that Gary is bored after the disastrous but no-doubt thrilling episode in Spain. He worries that their hard-earned rapport has fallen by the wayside over the intervening months. And he worries that by worrying, he’s making it all worse. Jamie has never been an anxious person, and the sudden influx of concerns leaves him somewhat lost for how to deal with them all, and he worries about that, too.

They tweet back and forth and exchange barbs and message each other interesting articles (to which the recipient would invariably respond, ‘already read that ages ago, get with it’) and generally fall back into their old rhythm. And all the while Jamie feels on tenterhooks, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

 

 

Typically, it’s England that throws off Jamie’s precarious balance. A few days after the most ridiculous job in football becomes, somehow, even more so, Gary and Jamie are perched on stools around Gary’s kitchen island amidst piles of loose-leaf, lazily hashing out the how they want to approach the next round of MNF.

Jamie is going through the myriad rumours of who Allardyce’s permanent successor as England manager is going to be while they’ve fallen into a comfortable silence, and so to Gary it must seem very much a non-sequitur when he looks up suddenly. “Have you thought about taking the job?”

 “The job? You want me to try and nick Swansea off of Giggsy?” They had been discussing the impending termination of Guidolin’s contract just five minutes earlier. “Think I’d rather let him sort that one out, to be honest. And Guidolin might not even get the sack.”

“I mean England, Gary. You’re not going to throw your hat in? Your stint in Valencia may be gloomy, not to mention the whole...mess with the Euros but your resume is still positively glowing with moral fibre.”

Gary laughs. “Are you trying to get rid of me so soon? I’m only just sat down and started breathing in this lovely London air again.”

“Yeah, well,” Jamie says in a weak approximation of a joking tone, “Got used to having the place to myself, without you hanging about like an analysis-mad ghost.”

The thing is, he had been still half-joking when he’d first said it, but the more he turns it over in his mind the more he can see it happening. The well of English managers is a shallow one indeed, and it would be just like the FA to go for pleasantly diplomatic and scandal-free Gary as an antidote to Allardyce. Well, he was diplomatic these days. Jamie still remembers being able to see Gary’s back molars whenever Gary’d screamed in his face back in their playing days.

“Too bad, you’re stuck with me,” Gary says, prodding Jamie on the shoulder. “We got used to each other once, surely we can do it again. Not even starting from scratch, look. I made you tea.”

Gary has indeed made Jamie tea. “And you remembered how much milk I like in it,” Jamie says, agreeably. “So you’re going to stay and make me tea instead of managing England?”

“If that’s what you’d like, Carra,” Gary says absently, crossing out a line of text and scribbling something else in his sharp handwriting.

Jamie nearly says something inadvisable, something impermissibly domestic like _yes, yes that’s exactly what I’d like, for you to make tea and me to scramble eggs and to know you’re not going anywhere, or at least not anywhere without me_ but manages instead to keep his mouth shut. He just curls his fingers a little bit tighter around the mug and focuses on the sheet in front of him.

 

 

“Not as environmentally friendly as doing it online,” Gary says once they’ve finished up, shuffling his papers together.

“Eh, we recycle,” says Jamie. “I like it better, working this way.”

“How old-fashioned of you.”

“It’s a proven fact that longhand writing helps you remember facts and all better than on a computer screen,” Jamie tells him, superiorly.

Gary raises an eyebrow. “What, so it’s a scientific basis you’re after now? Not my excellent tea-making skills that you wouldn’t be getting if we were to sort this out over the internet?”

It’s the prime set-up for a joke about Gary’s _tea-making skills_ , and Jamie knows that Gary’s almost certainly setting him up on purpose, a familiar step in their easy back and forth. Any other day he’d take the opportunity, but all the little things he’s been dwelling on of late give him a quick push towards honesty. And besides, Gary really did make a nice cup of tea. So Jamie shrugs and concedes. “Well, I do like working with you better in person. If you must know.”

“Did you miss me that much while I was gone?” Gary says, a small grin tugging up the corner of his narrow mouth.

“Yes,” Jamie replies, a bit too fervent but whatever, he’s decided for honesty and he might as well go the whole way.

Gary looks slightly taken aback. “You mean that?”

“’Course,” says Jamie, blinking at him like he’s being stupid. Which he is, c’mon now. “Don’t be an idiot.”

“Ah, yes, I’m really getting the affection coming through here,” says Gary sarcastically, but his ears are going red again, the way Jamie likes.

“Wouldn’t be wanting you to go getting full of yourself. But I would’ve been well devastated if you’d not come back. Or worse, if you had come back and then thought, ‘y’know what, this is wank; I’m off again to throw my hat in somewhere’.” It doesn’t cost _too_ much to reveal. And Jamie’s never been one to do things by halves.

Gary frowns. “You didn’t really think I wasn’t going to be happy to be back, surely,” he says, matter-of-factly. It’s the same tone of voice he uses when he’s pointing out something that, to him, is a basic tenant of football, whether it was an opinion on Paul Scholes or zonal marking or any other hundreds of things that Jamie has come to accept that Gary won’t budge on. “I like Sky. I like _you,_ Carra, as much as it pains me to admit.”

There’s a beat, and Jamie knows that they’re both thinking about the same thing. Tipsy elation and daring, fingers tracing over belt buckles and teeth clumsy against too-hot skin. Nearly but not quite falling into bed together. Jamie can see the memory in Gary’s eyes.

“Alright, so I might have been a little bit...concerned,” Jamie says, making an attempt to conceal that his _concern_ had been edging at times on _panic_. “You’d left once; can you blame me for thinking you might try it on again?” He stops himself and tries again. “I know you’ve always wanted to manage. And you ought to- I mean, it can’t be much fun for you, back behind the desk.”

“It wasn’t a terrible lot of fun in Spain, or weren’t you watching?”

“But it’s like you said. Before you got that offer from Valencia, you were starting to look about. You were always going to do something, Gary, you’d have to. You were going to go mad just watching on the side-lines all the time, and you’re too good to be forced to stay there in any case.”

Gary’s only registry of the somewhat inadvertent compliment is a slight blush. “I think we’re both too much of one-club men, Jamie,” he says thoughtfully. “We got very used to people leaving but just never figured out how to do it ourselves.”

The statement doesn’t quite follow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Sometimes you want to try your hand at something else. I thought I might be good. I’ve just got to know who I am, at the end of the day.”

“Yeah,” Jamie says, unable to resist, “you’re Gary Neville. And you’re a bit of a prat.”

Gary rolls his eyes. “Let me try to say something meaningful without interrupting, you philistine. I’m not saying I’d have ever wanted to play anywhere but Manchester United, because I never did want and I never would’ve. But it’s just-” he makes a frustrated half-wave gesture with his hand. “I can’t put it into words. But you have to admit there’s an _allure_ , sort of, about going somewhere else, somewhere far away.”

Jamie knows. He knows what Gary is saying because he’s like Gary. He wouldn’t go and change his career, because he only wants to have played for Liverpool and Liverpool alone, but he gets it. It’s the unknown German word that Gary had been talking around on MNF. It doesn’t have to be practical, it doesn’t have to be realistic, it doesn’t have to be true: it just _is._

“At the very least,” Gary says with a smile, “at the very least it’s nice that in this case I could very much come home again.”

And doesn’t that just break Jamie’s heart, just a little bit. It’s what’s been eating away at him: that Gary would feel like he couldn’t, or wouldn’t want to, come back. Jamie doesn’t know what’s going to happen to the both of them in a year or ten years but he does know-

He clears his throat. “’Course y’can. Y’can always come back ‘cos I’ll always want you. Back. I’ll always want you back.” The truth in that slip of the tongue hadn’t gone unnoticed. Jamie flushes but leaves it. They look at each other, standing in that particular moment in time in Gary’s tidy kitchen, the late evening light filtering quietly through the window over the sink.

“Your accent always gets worse when you’re emotional,” Gary tells him, his tone far more delighted than it is ribbing.

“Then stop making me emotional,” Jamie says, not apologising for his vowels sliding all over the place.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Gary says, his ears blazing and his eyes lit up like Jamie’s only seen once before. “Now. Shall I put the kettle on again?”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Fun Facts for context!  
> -The first Monday Night Football of the 2016/17 season was Chelsea v. West Ham. The preview is [here](https://twitter.com/SkySportsNewsHQ/status/765222119621791744).  
> -David Jones replaced Ed Chamberlain as the host of MNF at the start of this season.  
> -The conversation about Jamie getting his coaching badges is paraphrased to make it ~flow better but REAL, yes Gary did wax poetic about Jamie’s potential as a coach. I know. I got all teary-eyed as well. ([The relevant clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm322vkHjF8).)  
> -Sam Allardyce was sacked as England manager just 67 days after being appointed for being filmed saying shady things about third-party ownership of players.  
> -One of the candidates to replace Francesco Guidolin as manager of Swansea City was Ryan Giggs.  
> -The FA are all about English managers for the NT these days, but personally #KlinsiForEngland #SeriouslyJustImagineIt


End file.
